Too often we mistake making a living for having a life. We created unyoked as the antidote to that. That’s the mantra that Chris and Cam Grant kept in mind when coming up with the idea of Unyoked: a collection of homes away from home that aim to remind their customers what life really is about. 

“We build off-the-grid cabins then tuck them in unique wilderness locations no more than two hours from the CBD to help people stuck in the 9 to 5 disconnect,” explains Cam. The brothers both worked corporate environments for the majority of their lives, but soon released they were just itching to be somewhere else. And all it took was a desktop background to spark the first idea. 

“[I always] had on the other screen cabin porn –  little cabins tucked in unique locations. On a mountain in a jungle or by a river. And that's where we put those two concepts together and decided to build our first cabin.”

The cabin, located on the outskirts of Kangaroo Valley, is set on a 400 acre property packed with waterfalls, wildlife and an abundance of greenery. 

“It really represents the experience that we were trying to give people,” says Chris.

“You can't see or hear any human elements from within and around the cabin. So it has to make you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere… you have to be there to feel that sort of feeling at the base of your neck where staring up at the jungle like this here or staring up at a mountain you just feel dwarfed by nature,” adds Cam. 

And it’s this feeling that has seen international governments adopt the activity as a mandate for positive mental health - something that the brothers hope Australia can adopt in the near future.

“The Finnish government actually mandates a certain amount of forest time per month for every citizen to keep optimal mental health. We've seen studies that prove that cortisol levels and stress hormones decrease after time with nature... So there are so many benefits and we're really just trying to gather those and then illustrate them in a way that's easily understandable and then provide access to be able to experience them."

For more from the GQ Accelerate content series:

The Seabin Project

Catapult